186
THE SURAKARTA
climbed the three flights of stairs, she followed.
The room where lived the man who, the evening before the emerald was stolen, had shot at nothing at all was upon the top floor. This room, as Max had ascertained in the afternoon, the stranger still occupied; but farther back was an empty room that Max, after some parleying as to the price, had engaged.
"Eferything iss very goot," Max replied to the landlady's question as to whether he needed anything more, "if only I am not disturbed by my neighbor in the second room."
"That can be only for a few days," the landlady hastened to assure him. "He has paid for a week and at the end of that week he shall go; for already others on this floor are complaining. It is my own fault for
